Routine network maintenance caused a coast-to-coast service outage for Time Warner Cable, with the two-hour downtime starting at 4:30 a.m. EST. The problem reportedly arose with Time Warner Cable's "Internet backbone," and it seems rather likely that human error played a role in the problem. A full investigation is underway to determine why the company's 11.4 million subscribers were temporarily offline.

Ironically, the latest Time Warner Cable service outage occurred just a couple days after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said the company didn't file network outage reports fast enough. The federal government issued a $1.1 million dollar fine to the company.

Comcast is prepared to purchase Time Warner Cable for $45 billion. It will be one rather disliked company being purchased by a significantly larger disliked conglomerate.